Неотправленное письмо is another top notch Soviet film from the 1950s. Highly recommended!

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Cinematography again by Sergei Urusevski, who also did Cranes Are Flying and apparently was some kind of visionary genius in the world of film. And similarly to Cranes Are Flying, this a case where a fairly ordinary story turns into something explosive just because of the camera work.

: 2299 / 10000 10000 pages : 4142 / 10000 10000 minutes

Norsk

: 57 / 114 Duolingo

0 x

You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed -- Seneca

I'm on Chapter 17 of белая гвардия. Great book, and great miniseries available on youtube (about 5 hours total). I'm halfway through that. Part 1 takes its time getting started, but the evil Ukrainian Nationalists show up in Part 2 and things take off from there.

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I also watched брат 2:

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брат 2 is an entertaining movie, but it pretty much lacks 100% of the moral depth of the original. It seems (?) like this was an intentional choice. They didn't think they could match the first film on that angle, so they went in a different direction with the sequel.

Or so it seems to me. I enjoyed брат 2, but it's not going on my top ten list.

: 2576 / 10000 10000 pages : 4682 / 10000 10000 minutes

Norsk

Nothing.

: 60 / 114 Duolingo

0 x

You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed -- Seneca

I finished Белая гвардия and started Архипелаг ГУЛАГ. Even though Архипелаг has daunting vocabulary (18000 unknown words for me just in book one), Solzhenitsyn's style is clean, and he has this incredibly mordant sense of humor which I find very appealing (and the book would be unreadable without it, because otherwise it's just a long list of atrocities).

: 2657 / 10000 10000 pages : 4954 / 10000 10000 minutes

Norsk

Nothing, really.

I missed 4 or 5 days of Duolingo due to work and personal issues (Russian comes first when I'm pressed for time).

When I went back to Duolingo, a lot of my tasks were ungolded and I was back to dealing with ducks and ants for the thousandth time. And I sort of decided "the heck with it." I guess I'm the anti-Peter Mollenburg, and have never found an independent study course I could finish.

If you are a native speaker of English, who was an English major in college, and who has studied some German -- Norwegian is pretty straightforward. If the word order doesn't always resemble modern English, it often resembles older forms of English that I'm familiar with.

In Russian, if I see something like "лезвие ножа" everything comes to a halt while I figure out what it means. Whereas "knivbladet" doesn't exactly slow me down.

I read the first Chapter of Odinsbarn. It is a YA novel, and it is in the language which is probably closest to English. I had to look words up, but it wasn't a puzzle from start to finish like 'Собачье сердце' was.

So ... I'm thinking ... what do I need Duolingo for at this point? My vocabulary is enough to get started on a YA novel, and the grammar in the novel appears to be simple enough.

Right now I don't really have time to read L3 and am not organized to read outside of Lingq, but hopefully I can get my act together soon.

: 31 / 10000 10000 pages

0 x

You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed -- Seneca

A family crisis derailed my studies for several months. Back on track, now.

Русский

I'm reading Пикник на обочине intermittently. About 20% done. But I'm trying to concentrate more on the canned LingQ lessons that have audio. Lots of эхо москвы, etc. It's easy for me to focus just on reading, so I'm trying to make an effort to do L+R.

I gave up on Italki after about 50 hours. I realized I was getting really good at speaking really bad Russian, and was also training my tutors to understand really deplorably bad Russian. I will wait and get more passive exposure.

Known Words: 8694Words Read: 1184589

Norsk

Abandoned! I think from the beginning Norwegian was a bit of a compromise choice. German would have offered more resources and usability. Icelandic would have been cooler and more esoteric. Will get back to Germanic languages some other time. I already know one, anyway.

Italiano

Trying to learn this one as an experiment in 2017, using only LingQ.

Known Words: 110Words Read : 2484

4 x

You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed -- Seneca

More Особое мнение. As much as I like it, I do feel a bit trapped in the eternal wasteland of intermediate levelness. I'm going to increase my listening target for 2017 to 300 hours. It's just so much easier for me to read with the sound off--very easy for me to say "I'll listen next time" and keep procrastinating on the listening.

I've also finally purchased the Glossika books for Russian. I thought that course was pretty good (my Russian accent while regurgitating the Glossika sentences is good, whereas when I speak Russian ad hoc I can tell I sound very American). What made me quit Glossika before was that when I got to day 60 of the GSR files, the sentences got too long for me to decipher exactly what was being said. Without the book, it was impossible to proceed, etc.

Xmmm wrote:I gave up on Italki after about 50 hours. I realized I was getting really good at speaking really bad Russian, and was also training my tutors to understand really deplorably bad Russian. I will wait and get more passive exposure. ould have been cooler and more esoteric. Will get back to Germanic languages some other time. I already know one, anyway.

Thank you! it is comforting to read the same experience in someone else's log. We are not crazy and and stupid not to follow all the "just speak and speak" advice. Getting good at speaking badly/brokenly/false-beginnerishly/intermediatishly is a real thing and danger. Long live self study and lots of input! And even longer live tons of self-study in between speaking sessions.

(Sure, I am not telling anyone to avoid speaking completely, it is just not the panacea. Right now, I am experiencing several months of using French actively for hours every day, and I haven't improved. And I experienced the same thing previously at various phases of learning various langauges.)